Mixed fortunes for GB volleyball
Great Britain have both their male and female volleyball teams in action in Crawley at the weekend but they are suffering very different fortunes off the court.
Last Updated: 12/07/11 2:12pm
Great Britain have both their male and female volleyball teams in action in Crawley at the weekend but they are suffering very different fortunes off the court.
Back-to-back wins over Belgium will give Harry Brokking's men the chance to claim a maiden top-two finish in the European League, while Audrey Cooper's women are hoping to get the better of Switzerland and attract more interest to their cause.
While the men receive funding from UK Sport the women do not, and have been funding their own training programmes through a number of money-raising initiatives in order to keep their London 2012 dream alive.
They are not playing in the European League this season either, meaning they have had to scramble around for opponents and, as a consequence of that, they have been unable to market their fixtures to the public fully owing to the uncertainty over who they would be playing.
And despite feeling somewhat downhearted about that, the squad have met the challenge head on - just as they did last year when they cycled from Sheffield to London to fund their recent trip to South America - and are looking forward to showing how far they have come as a squad when the action gets under way at K2 on Friday.
Sold out
"The boys have done a good job and sold out their matches but we have struggled because we've not known who we would be playing," said setter Lucy Wicks.
"As a result, we couldn't promote out fixtures and while the boys sold out the matches, we couldn't sell that many. But we're used to having to struggle through and we'll continue doing it because we believe in what we're doing and the improvements we're making as a team.
"We funded our trip to South America with the money we raised last year, and that was when we were part-funded. Then we had it taken away completely in October and that was hard to take.
"We were all playing overseas with our clubs and had a team meeting via Skype and decided to do everything we could to keep things going. We've approached lots of businesses, individuals and all sorts of other people to get funding and we've had to come up with a lot of initiatives to do that."
One of those schemes born out of a team brainstorming session was their 'Adopt and Olympian' programme.
Wicks' mum, willing to lend a hand, approached a number of the squad's former schools and a number of others in and around the Poole area, and asked them to sponsor a player in return for personal appearances.
Response
The response was overwhelming, with Wicks and her team-mates spending the last week taking coaching and Q and A sessions at a number of schools, while the 29-year-old will do it all again next week on her week off.
"We have the 2012 club where people can just donate money and then we have the 'Adopt and Olympian' scheme where we approached all the schools we went to," Wicks added.
"The idea came up at a team meeting and I actually passed it over to my mum who is great at organising things like that. She did a fantastic job with it and it's really taken off.
"All the players have different strengths, so some of us have taken coaching, some have answered questions and some have even been asked to lecture in colleges.
"It's been a real big help and it's really appreciated by the squad. We just want to show what we're capable of this weekend now."
